Fraud Prevention

There has been a huge growth in cybercrime attempts against lawyers and firms, who must now be on guard against bad cheque frauds, phishing, funds transfer frauds and attempts to hack firm information. We have published a new 4-page Cybercrime and Bad Cheque Scams Fraud Fact Sheet (PDF) to help lawyers spot the red flags… Read More »

The Alberta Lawyers Insurance Association released this warning on March 5, 2018. The Alberta Lawyers Insurance Association (ALIA) has learned of a very convincing email scam that is trying to lure lawyers into giving away their passwords or installing malware by way of fake DocuSign requests. Lawyers have been receiving emails from a sender who… Read More »

[The following is the text of a Fraud Alert LAWPRO sent to all its insured lawyers on June 30, 2017, updated with email addresses used by fraudsters from further reports we have received. Updated July 5, 2017 and January 23, 2018 with new emails and bank account details] LAWPRO has received multiple reports of an… Read More »

The Law Society of British Columbia published the following warning to its members on December 15, 2017. A BC law firm has fallen victim to the sophisticated “phony direction to pay” social engineering fraud. Here’s what happened. The perpetrators hacked the firm’s computer, and then monitored the firm’s email traffic for some time before making… Read More »

See below for text of an Alert sent today by Alberta Lawyers Insurance Association. We are seeing similar scams targeting Ontario lawyers. We encourage Ontario lawyers to be vigilant and follow the precautions in this Alert. ALIA has received additional reports of fraudulent emails being sent to lawyers in Alberta and other jurisdictions. In these… Read More »

See below for a fraud alert circulated by the Law Society of British Columbia today. We are seeing similar fraud attempts in Ontario. Fraudsters continue to pose as individuals working in law firms or as clients or clients’ lenders, all with the goal of tricking lawyers into transferring trust funds to them. A number of… Read More »

Frauds targeting real estate lawyers are getting ever more sophisticated. LAWPRO has seen several attempted frauds involving corporate identity theft. The properties involved may be commercial or residential, but are always owned by a corporation. How these frauds work These frauds start with the fraudsters changing or stealing the identity of corporate property owners. This… Read More »

The Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) is warning members of the public not to engage in real estate transactions with John Van Dyk, of Chatham, Ontario. Neither he nor his company J. Van Dyk Realty Inc. are registered to trade in real estate. In order to trade in real estate in Ontario, salespersons and… Read More »